Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: For Saitama, Arataka Reigen and his Talk About Spirits Agency is his last hope for ever having hair- and emotions- again. (Or, the one where Genos is not a cyborg, but a vengeful, weakened ghost, and Saitama goes to Reigen and Shigeo for help... Not that anyone but Shigeo can SEE Genos, mind you!)
1. Chapter 1

Saitama adjusted the hat sitting on his head. His skin was so slick that the thing threatened to fall off if he so much as twitched.

"So." Reigen, the man sitting across the desk, crossed his legs. "You say you're cursed because you don't feel emotions anymore."

"Um, well, maybe," Saitama said. "I guess."

"You guess? What's that supposed to mean? Are you being haunted, or not?"

Saitama's blank stare could undermine the enthusiasm of millions. "Well, like, you're the psychic. You tell me."

Reigen's red hair bristled, and he pulled at his collar like the temperature in the room was getting to him all of a sudden despite the vent blasting frigid air on him from above. "I mean, well, it doesn't work like that- not all spirits are visible, not even to my trained eye! They have signs, like symptoms!" He made a grandiose gesture towards himself. "My abilities are more suited to sleuthing out that kind of ghost to know the most effective way to use my powers- and keep me from melting you by accident along with the spirit!"

"Dude," Saitama said.

"Yes, exorcism is a much more complex procedure than most people assume!" Reigen flashed a deceptively bright smile.

"No, I mean that this sounds super bogus."

Reigen's pallor turned spectral. Then, he cleared his throat and introduced some color back into his cheeks. "W-well, if that's all you wanted to tell me, then why, pray tell, did you come to my office, sir?"

Saitama opened his mouth, and then closed it. The hat perched on his head slid forward and shaded his eyes in a harsh, dramatic slash across his face. "Well, I guess I figured since I couldn't riddle it out by myself, that there might be something else to it. See, I've gotten really strong lately. Monstrously strong." His dark eyes peered up at Reigen. "I mean, I wanted to be strong, but I'm, like, unreal strong. At first I thought it was because of my training, but then..." He brought a shaking hand up to the brim of his hat, and ripped it off like one would remove a wax strip from sensitive skin.

Reigen stifled his horrified, high-pitched gasp with a hand to his mouth and another one to the strands of his own full head of bright, healthy hair.

"I know," Saitama said, stress burning deep, dark gashes beneath his wide, horrified eyes . "It's been gone for like a year. This is what I look like now. I don't even wax it, but this is what I look like now."

"You poor man," Reigen uttered. "You're cursed, definitely!" He tossed a forearm over his eyes and stretched an imploring hand out to his client. "With the worst possible kind of curse!"

Saitama's back straightened in his seat like the bones in his body were terrified for him. "So it is something supernatural?"

"Yes!" Reigen threw his head back and peered at Saitama through his parted fingers. "It's the curse of bad genetics!"

Somewhere, a cat yowled in distinct displeasure. Saitama stood out of his chair and turned towards the door.

Reigen likewise all but tripped out of his chair and scurried to get in front of Saitama. "Wait, wait! I never said I couldn't get rid of it!" His toes danced above the linoleum as Saitama picked him up and moved him out of the way like he were made of feathers. "Ack!"

"I don't have the energy to deal with you, man. Let me get my coat from the rack behind your kid there, and then I'll leave and we can pretend like this never happened." Saitama dropped his human load, and Reigen steadied himself on his assistant Shigeo's shoulder.

"I'm not his son," the boy said, his dull eyes lingering on Saitama's shoulder, "and I wouldn't say you're cursed, but there is a ghost following you."

Reigen's fingers attacked his collar again, and then carded through the hair on the back of his neck with the fury of a thousand disillusioned housewives on Valentine's Day. "Yeah! See, I was, uh, just getting to that! I had been kidding about the other thing!" He laughed airily. "Mob, tell this noble gentleman more about his ghost, would you?"

"The ghost wants you to help it get stronger. It also wants to be noticed- he's been screaming at you both for the past fifteen minutes," Shigeo said, this time pointing to thin air.

Of course, in Shigeo's eyes, there was definitely something there- a humanoid form about the size of a housecat, with a shock of pale, lively hair and a face red from exasperation. "And you couldn't have said something about me earlier?"

Another ghost, this one green and ugly and nothing but a face with symmetrical spots of red staining its cheeks, floated over Shigeo's shoulder and gave an appraising look to Saitama's specter. "A runty little thing."

Saitama's ghost slugged his inspector square in his broad nose.

Reigen chuckled. "Go ahead and eat it, Dimple."

"Eat me?!" The little ghost latched on to Saitama's neck.

"Dimple?" Saitama asked, glancing left, and then right, and then pointing to himself. "My name's Saitama, but what's this about food? And," he patted his neck, his fingers temporarily squashing his tiny hitchhiker, "did something fall on my shoulder?"

Shigeo shook his head, his expression hypnotizingly serious. "No, Dimple's the ghost that follows me around sometimes."

"Y'mean there's," Saitama shivered, and was suddenly hit with the same need to adjust his collar that Reigen suffered from, much to the dismay of the spirit occupying the same space, "another ghost?"

Meanwhile, two tiny arms shot out from where Dimple's ears should be, and he reached for his prey's neck. He was denied, and the two ghosts entered an intense swatting fight.

"Dimple, stop it," Shigeo instructed, holding up his hand and compelling Dimple to move away from Saitama's shoulder as if by magic.

The blonde ghost blew a raspberry.

Meanwhile, Reigen's smile reappeared on his face. "I see you understand now, good sir, what we psychics defend against! Spirits are all around us, and-"

Saitama clamped a hand over Reigen's mouth. "No, no. I want the kid to explain it."

Shigeo blinked up at Saitama from where he held Dimple hostage between his pale hands. "Oh, uh. Well. That ghost likes you, and it isn't ready to pass on, so…"

"I will have vengeance!" The tiny blonde ghost screamed.

"Yeah, but does it have anything to do with my problem?" Saitama asked, his hand mercilessly holding steady as Reigen flailed and pried at his grip.

"Your hair and your emotions?" Shigeo said, more to himself than any of the others in the room. "No, not really." He pulled Saitama's jacket off of the rack behind him and held it out to him. "Please let my Master go. He's changing color."

"Oh. Oops. Sorry." Saitama released Reigen, who gasped in gratitude, and took his blue track jacket. "Well, shit! That's not very helpful. Guess you can't help me. Oh, well." He slung on one striped sleeve, and then the other.

"Well," Shigeo said, holding out his hand, "Actually…" he trailed off, and his palm began to glow in tandem with Saitama's scalp.

"Wait, what is that-?" The bald man threw his hands up on top of his head, and his eyes bugged out as he felt something soft and dark push up out of the skin like daisies from beneath the cover of the last pristine, barren snow of winter. He frantically whirled around, and then darted into the nearby bathroom so quickly that Reigen and Shigeo could not even see him, and his little spirit was left behind in a daze.

Reigen blinked. "Wait, where-?"

"Sensei is incredible," the blonde ghost said, reverent.

Then, Saitama was back, his full head of hair shining beneath the fluorescent lights, and his hands clasped firmly around Shigeo's. "How did you do that?!" He demanded. "What did you do?! Can you show me? Can you teach me? I'm begging you, kid! You're amazing!"

Shigeo blinked. "Master Reigen taught me everything I know about control," he said lamely, his cheeks turning a light pink.

Saitama's head craned around to appraise Reigen's raised eyebrows.

"Ah, Mob…" He cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose since I am the premier psychic of the generation, I could stand to give myself a little more credit. After all, I-" Reigen rubbed at his neck, and then shrieked as he received a face full of Saitama standing much too close.

"You gotta teach me!" Saitama all but screamed. "You gotta teach me how to make my hair grow back in case it falls out again! I can't deal with that happening a second time! I just can't!"

For once, Reigen was at a loss for words. "Wh-what?"

"Seriously! I'll kill monsters for you, build you a new office, punch a ghost for you, whatever! Doesn't matter! Just teach me your ways, Master Raygun Aratakeout!" Saitama finished his speech with a bow, and Reigen only shot Shigeo a look.

From Shigeo and Dimple's point of view, Saitama's tagalong, the ghost called Genos, threw himself on the floor by Reigen's feet, too. "If Sensei calls you Master, you are my Master as well," he said. And then, a glowing eye poked out of his hair and examined them all. "But you'll never be as great as Sensei."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Thank you for reading! This is much dryer and much more slapstick than all of my other works, and is a sorta-gift for my pal over at Ao3. Also, several of you were kind enough to point out that my previous chapter had an HTML error and showed the code instead of just the text- thank you so much! If that happens again, PLEASE tell me. It doesn't always show up that way on my screen until after the fact (or whenever the site gets a format or system update- that's why I use "OOOOO" instead of page breaks; the letters don't get destroyed over time.)**

 **OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

His first day on the job, Saitama had shown up in a yellow superhero getup, and Reigen had just about had a conniption fit once he'd realized that Saitama had no reason to be wearing such a thing beyond a casual "You bust ghosts, right? So that's still hero work, kinda." So, his second day, Saitama opted for a pair of green crocs and white athletic socks beneath his blue tracksuit. Reigen responded with a tactful suggestion that perhaps a haircut would help Saitama look like a professional despite the outfit, and so today, on Saitama's third day of work, he rocked in wearing his cargo shorts and loud hawaiian-shirt-over-graphic-tee-with-boobs-on-it combo, complete with a pair of sandals that matched the frozen coffee cup he had taken fifteen minutes out of his shift to fetch.

The office was empty, as it had been for the majority of the past three days, and Saitama sucked on his green straw with great gusto to the tune of Reigen's dress shoes tapping against the floor in time with the rising crescendo of his irked typing.

Saitama accomplished his task of finishing his drink with a loud, rattling slurp as his straw mixed stray air with the dregs of his coffee.

"Can you not just wear a suit?" Reigen finally cried, veins popping from his face, and with a great clatter of his keys as he slammed his hands onto his laptop. "I'm taking valuable time out of my day to teach you the secrets of psychic power, and so I'd appreciate it if you didn't walk around like my establishment is some kind of a joke! You're scaring off potential clients!"

"Dude," said Saitama, one hand between the pages of a manga and the other looped over the back of his chair so his cup could dangle freely, "Some guy came in and got a massage and a handful of salt in his face." His lips found his straw again, and the resulting strangled inhalation pushed Reigen's face closer to twisting in on itself. "This place isn't funny enough to even be a joke. And you haven't taught me anything."

Reigen opened his mouth, closed it, and after a great and mighty display of hand gestures that suspiciously resembled the strangulation of an invisible man, shoved his fists in his pockets and huffed. He skulked over to the empty chair facing Saitama's and took a seat. "But somehow, despite that, you keep showing up. Alright. Alright! Okay." He sighed. "What's really the problem, here?"

"Uhm," Saitama looked down at the manga in his lap, and then over to the bookshelf leaning against the wall. "Well, I'm on volume four and you've got volume five, but once I get to volume six we're in trouble, since your collection then goes from five to seven and I just can't read things out of order…"

"Alright, get out of my office."

"No! Seriously!" said Saitama. "Look!"

Reigen begrudgingly shuffled over to his shelf and took a peek- and, indeed, the absence of volumes four and six from the shelf stared back at him like the toothless gaps in a child's mouth. "Ah! Crap! It's gone!" He turned around and addressed the nonchalant Dimple lurking behind his computer. "Did you take it?"

"Huh?" said Saitama. "No. I just said I can't read stuff out of order. Why would I take volume six when I just started volume four?"

"I'm not talking to you," Reigen snapped. "I'm talking to the actual ghost freeloading in my office and using my laptop, and," he hurried over to his desk and snapped the screen closed, "You _better_ not have been lurking around in my personal files- I _told_ you those are off-limits!"

"Like we don't both know what's in there!" Dimple challenged, yanking his ghostly, scrawny digits away from Reigen's rampage and crossing his arms. "You're lucky I don't just possess you and take your whole life for myself!"

"Sometimes, I wish I'd told Mob to nuke you," Reigen muttered.

"What, like a cold pizza? It doesn't work that way, stupid!" Dimple slapped his cheeks and gasped. "Are you calling me a pizzaface because of my spots?! I'll haunt you for sure for this!"

"You're already haunting me!"

"Man," Saitama said, face impassive, "You're kinda weird, aren't you? I can't tell if you're putting on an act or if you're just delusional."

Reigen spun around and planted his hands on his hips. "Au contraire- what about the miracle that is your sudden hair growth, huh? Is that all a trick? How do you explain that?" Dimple rolled his eyes. "Spirits and strange phenomena are all around us!"

Saitama ran a hand through his unruly hair and looked up as if he could see it sitting atop his head. "Yeah, about that. I've been thinking. It's the kid," he said. "The kid with the bowl cut's legit, and you're just, like, the salesman. Right?"

Dimple and Reigen spared each other a glance, the first with a grin as wide as his disembodied face could muster and the second with tell-tale sweat beading on his forehead as his joints locked with guilt, and then Reigen sprang to action.

"Aha! That's preposterous! I, Reigen Arataka, am truly the greatest psychic of-"

"Dude, give it a rest." Saitama sank lower in his chair. "You're really loud and annoying, you know?"

Dimple snickered, and for a moment, Reigen thought he heard Saitama do the same, but his lips were sealed closed and his face was still in his perpetually unamused expression.

Reigen huffed at the floor. "Well, at least I have the brains to show up for work dressed like a professional."

"Yeah, but a professional what?" Saitama took another sip from his straw, the dying wails of his drink sounding out through the room. "Why don't you get a real job?"

The chair opposite Saitama creaked as Reigen claimed it again. "Why don't _you_ , man?"

Saitama turned the page of his manga. "Tried. It's not for me- suit and tie's too stiff."

Reigen smiled despite himself, and waited for Saitama to continue. He did not, but the shadows on the corner of his shoulder moved like there was something there to cast them and tell them to dance.

"...is the greatest," came a whisper. "Don't fool yourself into thinking you're anywhere near his level!"

"'Scuse me?" Reigen asked.

Saitama kept his eyes on the book, clueless and listless. A finger reached up his nostril, and then wiped at the bottom of his nose as he sniffed.

The voice carried on without his input. "You're incomparable, you stupid fraud," it said. The shadow on Saitama's shoulder disappeared, and Reigen felt something chilly blow on his nose. "You're nowhere near as strong, or as wonderful, or as handsome as Saitama-sensei. You think you're so great because you have a pink tie wrapped around your neck- ha! Just be glad my Sensei doesn't choose to dress like you- then you'd really never be able to compare! You and your little…"

"Dimple." Reigen called over his shoulder, but the green ghost was nowhere to be found. "Aw, great. Just when I really need him. Stupid booger."

"What was that, man?" Saitama asked, peering up from his book. "I missed that. Did you say somethin'?"

Reigen waved it away. "Nothing. Don't worry about it. Go back to reading."

"I can't believe Sensei would even give you the time of day, let alone grace you with his presence more than once. You're a waste of his time, you filthy charlatan!"

Reigen planted his chin on his fist, and rested his elbow on his knee. Then, he held out his other hand, and grabbed blindly. He caught air.

"Ha! Even if that could do anything to me, you missed, you stupid-!"

Reigen swatted the air again, this time with both hands.

To both his and Genos's surprise, his fingers hit something solid, and closed around the body of the ghost to hold fast.

"Holy shit," Reigen said, poking Genos's stomach, which gained color the more he touched it and the little ghost's panicked squeals grew louder with every poke, "I got it!"

"Let me go!" Genos cried, tensing and hiccuping at another of Reigen's prods.

"Holy Hell, are you ticklish?!"

"N-no!" Genos cried, but the smile curling onto Reigen's face sleuthed out his lie.

"Exorcism style- Tickling Shitty Little Ghost Technique! Ha!" He massaged Genos's trunk and swatted away his tiny hands as they fought back using what secret techniques and reflexes his status as a green belt martial artist allotted him.

"N-noooo," Genos wailed, the hazy tail where his legs should be thrashing madly. "Noooo!"

Saitama, meanwhile, finally dragged his nose out of his book. "What the hell are you doing?!" he asked. "Have you lost your mind for real this time, or are you still trying to con me?"

"Sensei, help!" Genos screamed.

"No!" Reigen said, gripping Genos around his chest like a puppy and holding him aloft. "Look! I got it! I got it! I really got an actual ghost in my-!"

"Dude, there's nothing there," Saitama said, his eyelids lowering over his droll stare. "Stop trying to bullshit me, okay? I'm just here until the kid gets here."

Reigen lowered Genos, dejected, and the little ghost's face mirrored his captor's as it fell. "Sensei still can't see me? Oh…"

Saitama flipped a page, unenthused. Genos started to snivel.

The atmosphere in the Talk About Spirits Agency grew that much colder, that much more isolated, much like the lives of the three individuals sitting inside of it.

Of course, Shigeo chose this moment to walk in, the loud orange shirt patterned with monkeys and shredded sleeves most definitely a testament to the new dress code Saitama had wrought, and the neon-lime-rimmed, perfectly round sunglasses something far beyond it.


	3. Chapter 3

"Alright, so," Saitama began, closing the front and back cover of his manga together with a decisive clap. "You mind if I ask you something, kid?"

Shigeo's placid, disinterested eyes revealed themselves as their owner removed the offensively loud sunglasses from their vicinity and rested them on his head. "Oh, no. What is it?" He then blinked at Reigen, who had a heartbroken frown on his face and a heartbroken Genos in his hands. "Master, are you trying to give that ghost a massage to make him stop crying?"

Saitama jumped to his feet, as his boggled eyes took in Reigen, too. "Uh, wait. So he's really caught a ghost? Seriously?"

"Yes!" screeched Reigen and Genos both, two wildly varying levels of tears waterlogging their respective voices.

"Why can't you see me?!" added Genos, another waterfall of ethereal water erupting from his eyes. His fists shot out and pumped up and down like pistons as he threw a tantrum in Reigen's lap- at which Reigen awkwardly cradled the ghost in his arms and shushed him on his shoulder by way of his specter soothing, his secret technique. Genos punched at his neck and shoulders, but then relented as his little fists were barely corporeal and thus did nothing. A fresh ocean of tears poured from his face and he buried his face into Reigen's neck.

"Do ghost tears have salt?" Reigen murmured to no one in particular as he patted Genos's back. "If they do, can a ghost exorcise itself by crying? This might be the single most important ghost fact I've ever pondered." Then, "Holy shit. I need to put this on my homepage."

Saitama ignored him off as he leaned down to stare at the deceptively plain air clutched in Reigen's fingers. "Hm," he said, considering nothing. "Hmmmmmmmmm." He circled around Reigen with critical eyes, and then gave a sharp inhale. "Oh! Wait a minute! Is that…?"

Genos perked up, hope swimming in his eyes along with saline.

Saitama stuck out a finger. "Is that…?"

"Sensei," Genos wibbled, his tiny hand towards the man's extended fingertip. "Finally!"

Alas, Saitama reached straight through Genos and pointed at the tag peeking from Reigen's collar. "I used to have that same shirt! Ha! Anyways." He turned back to Shigeo, blissfully unaware of the utterly broken Genos he'd shoved his hand through and subsequently blown off. "Kid, you're the real attraction to this place. I want to learn how to make hair grow at will from you, not your fraudster teacher. Will you teach me?"

Reigen casually scratched his nose, his middle finger facing Saitama, before burying his hands back into the hair on the head of the inconsolable Genos clinging to his neck.

"Oh. I'm afraid I don't know how to teach someone that," Shigeo said.

"What?!" Saitama said. "C'mon, look. I don't have that much money, but I can pay you in other ways- oh! I can lend you the missing books four and six of the manga on this faker's shelf!" He pointed to the line of books sitting on Reigen's bookshelf, a smile lighting up his face at the bland idea.

"If you already owned that manga, why the hell did you come here to read mine?!" Reigen interjected.

He was promptly ignored.

Saitama forged on. "Or I could show you some cool sales for candy! I could make it so you'd make all the sales! Yeah! Or, um," he buried his chin in his palm, "hm. What do kids like? Hm." He looked back at Shigeo. "Kid! What do you want?"

Shigeo shook his head and sent his black fringe flying. "Oh, I don't want anything, but thank you. Besides, I can't teach psychic powers. You sort of have to simply, ah, have them," he said. "I wish muscles worked that way, sometimes," he said, listing off into the distance.

"Muscles? Y'mean, you-!"

Just then, a loud crash shook the office and a giant lizard dressed suspiciously like Reigen in slacks, a jacket, and an obnoxiously pink tie cut the Spirits and Such office in two with the length of its body.

"Well, well!" It hissed, giving the occupants of the room a once-over with its slitted, golden eye. "What have we here? Someone else to entertain the Lounge Lizard?"

Reigen wasted no time in grabbing Shigeo by the hand and forcing himself in front of the boy, Genos still in his arms. "Mob! If you can't take this thing, we'll need to ru-"

No sooner had Reigen opened his mouth than Saitama, muscles sitting comically within the remains of his Oppai and Hawaiian shirt combination- the only surviving clothes that weren't completely shredded off of him by the Lounge Lizard's arrival- delivered a backhanded slap to the monster's cheek and the thing blew out of there and into the atmosphere like a leaf caught in a hurricane.

Shigeo and Reigen watched, dumbfounded, as Genos sniffled with pride. "That's my Sensei," he said, and then buried his nose back into Reigen's neck for another good cry. "If only he could hear me when I tell him how amazing he is!"

Meanwhile, Saitama trailed the arc of the Lounge Lizard's shrinking form with his shielded eyes as he scratched at his left asscheek. "Hope that doesn't land on anything important," he said. "But then again, if it does… oh well!"

A chilled wind blew through the ruined office, accompanied only by Genos's sorrow.

Shigeo stepped forward and, after prying it away from his rump, clasped Saitama's hand in his own tiny and pale ones.

"Mob!" cried Reigen, aghast at the lack of sanitation. "Don't! You just saw where that's been!"

His concerned plea went unanswered. "Teach me," Shigeo said, his eyes firmly planted on the mostly naked man in his grip. "We have a deal, Saitama-sensei. I accept you as my new master."

Genos squeaked as Reigen seized.

"Oh? Huh? Really?" Saitama said, smiling at the boy and shaking his hand. "If it'll get you to teach me how to grow hair, then sure, I'll be your Sensei or whatever!" The sunlight bathed over both Saitama and Shigeo as if to bless their new agreement with a corona of light cast down by the heavens themselves, outshined only by the broad, blithe, open-mouthed grins covering their faces.

Behind them, Reigen and Genos both shattered.


End file.
